Big Ten Academic Alliance Activity in Support of Open Access

Big Ten Academic Alliance Universities are among the national leaders in promoting greater author control over the dissemination of their research. The faculty senates of twelve Big Ten Academic Alliance universities have commended to their colleagues that they use the Big Ten Academic Alliance Authors Addendum (link) when assigning rights to a prospective publisher.

In 2006, the Provosts of the Big Ten Academic Alliance publicly endorsed congressional passage of federal legislation (Federal Research Public Access Act) that would mandate deposit of federally funded research findings letter in an openly accessible repository.

Almost all Big Ten Academic Alliance university libraries manage secure repositories for digital content. While the scope of content held in such repositories varies considerably from university to university, some of the country’s largest and best institutional repositories for research findings are maintained by Big Ten Academic Alliance Universities. Visit Big Ten Academic Alliance's Open Access Repositories page for a list of OARs.

In addition, many Big Ten Academic Alliance libraries support publishing operations intended to encourage innovation in genres of publication, as well as supporting the open dissemination of both new and traditional forms of scholarly communication. Visit Big Ten Academic Alliance's Campus-Based Publishing page for a list of open-access publishing operations.